Who Are You Targeting? Really?
To achieve true segment focus, managers must be able to identify and define the markets they plan to market to/with. To hone in on the segments to identify the ones that best fit their business/marketing strategy.
To do that, you must be able to answer a series of key questions, including:
- Who are the current customers that make up your market?
- Who are the future customers in that market that align with your product offering?
- Do you want more customers like them and are those customers profitable?
- What are the distinct segments in the market and how big is each segment (i.e., number of prospects, market value, and revenue expectation)?
- What is the growth rate of each segment and how much will it cost you to target each one?
- What are the major trends in each segment that make it attractive?
- Which characteristics (company size, revenue size, IT budget size, geographic location, business model, current needs, or pain points) define the buyers in each segment and how do those characteristics align with your product offering and value proposition?
- Why (based on the criteria above) is a particular segment a good fit for your business?
Answering those questions should help you boil down your target market to the customer segments that make the most sense for you to target.
Identifying your target audience is critical to your professional success
Of course, it goes without saying that you can’t just write and post content if you have not identified exactly with whom you wish to share that content. You will certainly want to gain wide exposure of your ideas but it is also (and equally) important for you to gain the right type of exposure and to provide valuable information to people with whom you can develop a long-lasting relationship that will be mutually beneficial. It is important to understand at this point that you will have to make a good amount of effort to cultivate those relationships (and other relationships as well). It may not cost you a great deal of money; however, that doesn’t mean that it won’t cost you something. It is critical to your success that you are committed to putting in the time, effort, and whatever else is required in order for you to build those relationships that are the most important for you. Also, remember, it isn’t ever about how wonderful you are. It is only about your ability to solve the other person’s problems. If you can succeed at that, the other person will become a loyal, enduring client and your relationship will certainly stand the test of time.
If you are able to focus on your target audience, in the long-run, it will save you a great deal of time, effort, and expenses. After you have been able to identify that target audience, you will continue to refine the list of audience members; however, it will be very easy to do that once you have created the initial list. Your hard work will definitely pay off over time. The reason for that is quite simple. Once you have identified your target audience, you can concentrate on satisfying the needs and wants of those people and you will no longer have to waste time with spinning your wheels in an attempt to figure out exactly who your target audience is (and should be). You will engaging people who you should be engaging.
The importance of having a well-defined target audience
If you can manage to define and successfully choose your target audience, you can successfully compete with anyone you wish. You can go up against large, medium, and small businesses no matter what size your business is. It is a matter of strategy rather than size. You are just as qualified and equipped as anyone else to see it through to the end. If you are able to do that, you can spend whatever money, time, and effort you need to spend exactly where you need to spend it and it will pay off for you. Your target audience will become loyal and they will continue to interact with you productively and successfully.
Conclusion
It is critical to the success of your business to define your target audience and subsequently to do everything in your power to cultivate that audience and to make them understand clearly how important they are to your business. In fact, without them, you couldn’t get to where you need to be.
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It appears that those who focus on Marketing think business starts with Marketing. To talk about target audience from the viewpoint of who you need is the same mindset that thinks ” if I build it they will come.” Business owners need to understand why anyone would want their offerings in the first place. Business is about finding and meeting needs at a profit, not finding someone to unload whatever it is you’re offering.
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Music Industry Network
Discussion: Who is Your Target Audience?
Interesting observation. What if you’re a composer with a rather eclectic palate. Is your target then simply acquiring a fan base? If your tastes run from the Blues, Jazz, R&B, Gospel you should have a broad audience that perhaps needs to be honed according to the most current project.
By G Michael Ryce
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Step Into The Spotlight!
Discussion: Who is Your Target Audience?
Whenever I ask prospective ghostwriting clients who their target audience is, 9 times out of 10 they’ll say, “Uh – everyone.”
By Christina Hamlett
Christina – yes thats a common delusion. The next most is to give some huge undifferentiated demographic descriptor – like “Mature Women”
Kenneth, Those who actually understand what modern marketing is about know that business is built on customers – the market. Not on making a Product and going out and finding prospects and trying to sell it to them. The latter is just plain dumb and a waste of limited resources
That is why you have to know your (targetted) maket, so you can effectively make them a good (targetted) value offer
GMR “.. if you’re a composer with a rather eclectic palate. ” then consider that you may have more than one target market.
Since it is a “rather” eclectic palate, it is still not everyone. Find your thread(s). Check out who buys your stuff and why if you can. That will give you some very good information
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Small Biz Nation
Discussion: Who is Your Target Audience?
A phrase I like to use is, “Your next best customer is doing business two doors down.” Related to this post, it means thinking bigger, reaching further. With Alignable (alignable.com) the free local business social network, nearby businesses collaborate and grow their market in ways not previously possible.
By Eric Groves
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Music Business Professionals
Discussion: Who is Your Target Audience?
Ok, I hope I can say this and have you see my views on it in a short blog, don’t know if I can do that. But, I am a musician with several styles, playing them all fluently, and I’ve known for a long time that big company likes it when their artists can be identified when heard, and staying in their realm, with their signature sound/music style/vocal style. It does make sense to me, but the biggest selling band ever to exist, The Beatles, was extremely diverse in style of music and vocals and it was not that easy to hear their new record and say, “Hey, that must be the new Beatle song”. It’s difficult to always stay within a certain style/sound once you’ve had a first hit or even just making the charts, and having a following of fans. The next song may be totally different in style. To be a true artist, is to write what is in your heart and say what you want to say, and get it down in the studio as quickly as possible so that you capture what was intended for that song, CD, album etc. I think, and that’s just me, that an artist should be true to themselves and strive for expression first. Recording in the same studio is sometimes a must for continuing a certain sound, like Van Helens’ “Brown Sound”, and I understand why record companies want their artists to be recognized as soon as their bands new song plays, I do get it, but I don’t really want to be one of those bands/artists. Maybe that’s why I’m sitting at the house recording what I want to record and it sounding the way I want it to sound, instead of being out on the road promoting my new album/CD. Just my thoughts on it all.
By Michael Rutherford
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Linked User Group (Official Linked User Group)
Discussion: Who is Your Target Audience?
I take the stance that Steve Jobs took a long time ago – how will anyone know what they want util we show it too them – and that goes for my art as well – there is no way that anyone can reject or accept what is in my collection without first seeing what is there – and that is simply how I must proceed for without making the effort on my part to introduce to you what is there and without you making an equal effort to see what is there – of course nothing will happen – but that is the principle that the largest company in the world was built on –
By Walter Paul Bebirian
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Step Into The Spotlight!
Discussion: Who is Your Target Audience?
Coaches who coach anyone or everyone are not likely to earn income from coaching. Without a niche that is needed and wanted by persons willing to pay, your coaching will be a hobby at best.
By George Anderson, MSW, BCD, CEAP
Walter – Steve may have said “how will anyone know what they want util we show it too them” but it was a nonsense to big note himelf. Apple have always done marketing research.
And note, even with that they had a few failures.
What Steve did well was market Apple. The technology was not new (so it was well known) and hardly anything invented at Apple.
Michael – you couldn’t pick a new Beatles song when it came out? Really? Lennon and/or McCarthy’s voices?
Anyway. If you want to just do everything for yourself as an artist, and not rely on any marketing advice, you will have to rely on luck I suppose. You wont be alone.
Via LinkedIn Groups
Group: Web Editors
Discussion: Who is Your Target Audience?
It depends on how specific the product is … generally I believe it useful to use a broad approach to avoid compartmentalisation. The right approach could sell a stethoscope to a truck driver (-:
By Keith Harris
Keith, I gather you are not familiar with modern marketing and confuse it with some older selling concept.
“Segmentation and Targeting” are used because they are more effective and efficient in building business.
Except by using methods that are probably illegal (conman/misrepresentation etc) you cannot sell something to someone who does not want it. Nor is that (misrepresentation) a good way to conduct or build ongoing business.